Penn State Visit - November 17-18 2008

On November 17th & 18th I visited Penn State, my fifth sabbatical trip. Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Chimay Anumba (department head) and Kevin Parfitt I interviewed 11 faculty and discussed this sabbatical topic with about five others at lunch on the 18th.  As on my previous trips everyone was welcoming and helpful, making my visit both productive and enjoyable.

What did I learn?

About the Penn State program. It is:

• Big: 500 undergraduates plus graduates students; 18 full time faculty
  
  
  
  • this is in keeping with Penn State - 44,000 (corrected 11/21/2008) students on this campus I was told
• Old: It was founded in 1910
• Independent: it's in it's own department in the college of engineering
• Proud: It claims (with much evidence to support it) that it is the "preeminent" AE program
• Forward looking: it has been working with BIM and sustainability for some years. It has identified "High Performance Buildings" as a focus area incorporating both of these topics.

Teaching Methods and Curriculum

• The undergraduate curriculum offers 4 tracks, covering all of the generally accepted AE sub-disciplines with students graduating in the following approximate percentages (corrected 11/21/2008):
  
  
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    Structures	35%
    Construction Management	35%
    HVAC	15%
    Electrical/Lighting	15%

• The fifth year of the program allows considerable depth, including 4 semesters of architectural design.
• About 50% of the students pursue a bachelors+masters program - again made easy by the 5th year
• There is a strong emphasis on meeting the needs of industr
  
  
  • A few faculty felt there was too much such emphasis
• The emphasis in design classes, particularly Senior Thesis (year-long), is on individual rather than team projects
  
  
  
  • There are team projects in prior classes
  • Students are explicitly required to demonstrate both depth in a discipline area and breadth by work in two other areas
• Design Teaching are primarily what I would call "studio" and "Modified Studio"
• In other classes there is a significant amount of hands-on lab work as well computer software.
• "Practitioner Instructor" faculty are an important resource to the department, bringing industry experience to the mix.
• The department is monitoring the Bachelor's + 30 goal of ASCE
  
  
  
  • They feel that they meet the intent of the criteria already although there is concern about specific wording issues.

Issues

• BIM (Revit Architecture) has been part of the curriculum for about five years and is rapidly becoming the primary tool, with plans to expand to Revit Structural and MEP.
• Sustainability is at the heart of the department's mission statement and is incorporated into many of the classes
  
  
  
  • Construction Management Faculty seem to be leading in the both the BIM and sustainability areas, though the HVAC and Lighting faculty have long been concerned about sustainability issues.(corrected 11/21/2008)
    
• The university reward (Tenure and Promotion) system concerns many of the faculty
  
  
  
  • A number feel some variation (there was considerable variety) of the sense that what is important to industry and their graduates is not what is rewarded by the T&P system.
  • Others felt that that the teaching loads prevented their pursing what was important to them and the reward system - research
• The department has good, cooperative relationships with both Civil Engineering and Architecture for both course offerings and some research projects.

Students

• Penn State is a highly selective program
  with a capped enrollment of 100 students per year
  
  
  
  • Students are admitted only after having achieved at least a 3.0 average in their first year at the university
• Their attrition rate from the program is negligible from 2nd through 5th year.
• The relative numbers of Structural, Mechanical and Electrical graduates are recognized not to match the job opportunities in industry.
  
  
  
  • Since all their graduates receive multiple job offers this is not a high priority issue.
• The fall-semester Penn State Job Fair is the big hiring opportunity. The number of firms attending (166 this year) far outnumbers the students (~100)
  
  
  
  • Firms have found that hiring interns from the fair is an excellent way to hire graduates ultimately.
  • Professors value the internship experience of their students.
  • NCAT and Tennessee State both participate in the Job Fair
• About 30% of the students are female.

Observations

• Few of the faculty expressed much interest in how other AE programs
  operate or the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI).
  
  
  
  • Some expressed interest in arriving at a more specific definition of AE for accreditation purposes
  • It's my belief that Penn State has much to offer other AE programs and that there might well be things they could learn beneficially as well.
• While the research efforts and graduate program are not the focus of my study, I'd note that both seem to be very healthy and well organized.
• As noted in the introduction, Penn State is a very proud institution that believes it is preeminent in AE education. Since I haven't visited all the AE programs yet I couldn't proclaim a "best", but everything I saw impressed me. I came away with definite ideas about how to improve my own program.

About my Sabbatical Project

• What Jay Pluckett had first suggested to me was reemphasized on this visit, that it's important to distinguish between four-year and five-year programs in any analysis. It's clear that the extra year offers many opportunities for increased depth and breadth.
• I'll also be looking at the difference between stand-alone and combined program departments (e.g. Civil + AE + xxx).

Learning about Qualitative Research

If you're an engineer who thinks of undertaking a similar "qualitative research" project this post may be of interest to you.  My intent is to reflect on the self-education process I've undertaken and recommend a book that I found helpful.
   
As a person who thinks of himself as an engineer first, with other interests riding well behind, I undertook this sabbatical project in what now seems a naïve way. My belief was that I would create a survey and talk to faculty at the relevant institutions (all 17 accredited AE schols) and write up the state-of-the-art in teaching architectural engineering design.  I knew that I would have a number of apparently technical problems collecting the data and ensuring that I drew valid conclusions from that data.  I knew too that I was entering a field that is essentially a humanities or social sciences field, but I didn't really understand what that meant.
   
In the months since the project was approved I've formulated the survey and have started the interview process.  Talking with colleagues from other disciplines, picking the software I'd use (NVivo), and continuing my reading about my topic I've learned a great deal, much of which is humbling.  I've become far more aware of the complexity of this process and the many different approaches that have evolved in different fields to understanding phenomena like the one that interests me.
   
I recently read with great care Readme First for a User's Guide to Qualitative Methods 2nd Edition, by Richards and Morse - 2006, Sage.  It's written primarily for people like me, beginners in the field who need orientation and specific steps to ensure that what you produce meets the standards of good qualitative research.  Probably most important for me was the early delineation of the three major approaches to qualitative research: Phenomenology, Ethnography, Grounded Theory.  My early explorations in the area of qualitative research brought up Grounded Theory so I had assumed that's what I was doing.  The authors' careful delineation of the purposes and methods of each of these approaches made it clear to me that in fact what I was doing was a form ethnography, which in turn implied a different approach to collecting and analyzing the data. 
   

Of course I'm not an expert from having read a single book, but thanks to it I feel that I have a much greater likelihood of producing something that has a reasonable chance of withstanding critical scrutiny.

North Carolina A&T State University

On November 12th I visited visited North Carolina A&T State University (NCAT), my fourth sabbatical trip. Thanks to the efforts of Sameer Hamoush (Dept. Head) I met all faculty currently teaching the design aspects of the AE program and others as well.   As on my previous trips everyone was welcoming and helpful, making my visit both productive and enjoyable.

What did I learn?

About the NCAT Program

It has a sixty-plus year history of providing a path for African-American (and other) students to enter the professions, both Architecture and Engineering.

• Until the mid-1990's as many architects as engineers emerged from the program.
• Now, with changes in registration requirements, the program is solely engineering-focused, with the majority of the graduates going to work in construction firms.
• Enrollment has fluctuated with varying university admissions policies. It is currently near or at it's highest - 36 students in the capstone design class this year, versus 15 or so only four years ago.

Teaching is the primary responsbility of the department

• Teaching loads are demanding, with course loads of 9-12 credits/semester being common.
• The growth in enrollment has been coincident with a loss of faculty for various reasons, resulting in increased class sizes and teaching loads.
• As in other institutions the university-level atmosphere is changing. More research expectations are being placed on faculty without a corresponding decrease in teaching load or increase in research resources.

Teaching Methods and Curriculum

• The curriculum makes an effort to include all the ABET-identified building systems.
  
  
  
  • There is little construction management included.
• Faculty varied in their identification of teaching methods used in the curriculum.
  
  
  
  • Lecture is the predominant teaching mode.
  • The two Architectural Design courses (taught by department architectural faculty) use a modified studio method
  • The two-semester capstone design sequence uses teamwork extensively, focusing (usually) on the engineering design of building plans taken from a real multistory project. The effort is to take students all the way through schematic, design development and construction document phases.
  • Individual instructors make significant efforts to introduce site visits, visiting lecturers and other methods to bring the external world into the classroom.
• At one point the program had a Masters degree in AE, but that was dropped in 1998 when enrollment decreased.
  
  
  
  • In 1995 the program changed from a 5-year to a 4-year program, in signficant part as a response to the change in architectural registration requirements.
  • There's little discussion of ASCE's possible move to a Bachelor's+30 program. When I raised the issue, there were signficant doubts about its benefits.
• Because the faculty is quite small (5 full-time currently), coordination appears to be quite informal.
• There appears to be some tension in relation to the design classes between those with a practice background and those without because of differring views of what's important.

AE Content Issues

• Sustainability is significant concern with one faculty member as a champion.
  
  
  
  • There is a LEED certification course
  • Sustainability examples are introduced into at least some of the design courses.
• BIM is not seen as a major issue
  
  
  
  • There appears to be little attention paid to it overall
• The Bachelors+30 movement, as noted above, is not given much attention.
• Most faculty attention is on student-related issues, including those of providing good teaching when dealing with the heavy loads experienced.

Students

• As noted above, the school has a proud history of providing opportunity for African Americans.
• AE students are about 3/4 of the department's current senior class of 40 students
• Many arrive not fully prepared in math and sciences, which contributes to a significant attrition rate from freshman to senior year (80 entering with about 30 graduating were current numbers though they should be adjusted to reflect the growing enrollment)
• Many work 20 or more hours a week in non-engineering jobs in order to meet the financial demands, with consequent effects on their academic performance.
• Despite intense efforts on the part of the faculty many do not see the value of preparing for the FE exam, thus producing a performance that disappoints the faculty.

Observations

• The faculty are proud of what their students are able to achieve, while recognizing that many students must live with issues that prevent them from always achieving full potential.
• A number of faculty expressed interest in the results of this study, wanting to see themselve compared to other schools.
• The teaching loads are extremely high, leaving little time in most cases for experimentation or research.
  
  
  
  • Some though, are remakably successful at maintaining a research and professional society engagement despite the loads and limited resources.
• I didn't have time to visit student classes, though several faculy were disappointed at not being able to show me what their students were doing. Those students I observed in and around the deparment were friendly, and cheerful.

About my Sabbatical Project

• Again I'm reinforced in my belief that the face-to-face meetings bring to light relationships that I would never understand strictly from the survey results.